That week, we tried to make them turn one after the other but with a delay between each turn. We had an issue with the fonction "delay" which didn't work alone. Finally, we put it in a condition "if" and suddenly it worked.

Box

Today we did a plan for our box on a website in order to cut the sides in a medium board. Actually, at the beginning we wanted to print it entirely with the 3D printer. However, because of an issue with the time and the others classmates who also needed the printer, we came with this decision to make it on ourselves with our little hands. So we measured and estimated some measures for the box. Then we put those measures on the website.

After having upload the plan we had on the website, we had to open it on Adobe Illustrator CS6 then register the plan as a ".ai " file. After that, we opened it on a CoreIDRAW Essentials X6 and added some holes to the original plan (on the right side of the box) : a big hole to let the user touch the wheels , an other hole for the micro-usb cable to fit into the port on the Arduino. We also dit another hole with a drill above the last one (it is not on the plan) for the alimentation cable.

First of all, we tried to make the 4 motors turn at the same time to see if it worked . We were able to do it. Then, the aim was to make them work but one after the other. There was some trouble because, we could make 2 turn at the same time but the third one didn't want to turn. But we finally managed to do it .

Today the fablab received motors ... but the wrong ones. Indeed, they received the continuous servo motors we wanted to order at the beginning but the stepper motors we ordered last week aren't there yet.

So, for the moment you can discover how our prototype will work :

First of all, you can see bellow our wheel with the dots. There are only 4 dots by number because braille numbers are only code with the 1 to 4 dots. The wheels here are attached to a tip which is the link between the wheel and the stepper motor.

Then all of this will be attached to the stepper motor. The stepper motor, as its name shows, will make the will turn step by step, which is exactly what we need to make a clock. We managed to find one stepper motor and measured it to take its dimensions and modelize it so we could finally launch the wheels printing.

Stepper motor Finally, here is the final model with the box. The user will be able to read each number to have the time by putting his finger on the holes and slide it . The hole dimensions are designed to prevent the user to turn the wheel by accident and then disrupt the clock.

We also started coding. But before we soldered our arduino card ! Indeed, we received it like that (photograph on the left) then had to solder it on ourselves (photograph on the right).

With the code on Arduino, we were able to make the stepper motor turn as you can see on our twitter.

Finally, we printed our first wheels. The first one in ABS plastic (left) and the second one in resin (right).

It appears that the fablab we are working with did not order our servomotors. Anyway ! It seems like we'd ordered the wrong ones. With servomotors, we wouldn't be able to track the wheel's position. So instead we ordered stepper motors. Hopefully we will receive them in time for the 5th week .